The Democratic Party’s donor class is freaked out by the prospect of a massive populist wave election that doesn’t just switch control of Congress but puts into office the particular kinds of Democrats they loathe — the kind who may actually fight to get big stuff done, like, say, Medicare for All. And so they’re rolling out a set of proposals designed to prompt Democrats to begin negotiating against themselves and prevent that fight from even happening.

Last week, the oligarch-funded Searchlight Institute, led by Sen. John Fetterman’s former top aide, got itself a headline proposing that Democrats coalesce around free primary care and around creating the public health insurance option that the party promised to create eighteen years ago and then dropped.

In a vacuum, the initiatives are fine. Free primary care and a public insurer competing with private insurers would be better than the current health care dystopia (which is why I was an advocate for the latter eighteen years ago when it was on the legislative table!). And yes, the proposals are like many laudable Democratic bills in Congress that would incrementally improve the health care system.